Fred Stonehouse, a rising star on the international art scene, gives the last Art Talks lecture of the year at noon, Friday, April 16, in the theater at Riverfront Museum Park, which houses Rockford Art Museum (RAM). Tickets are $10, or $8 for students and seniors.

Annually presented by Women’s Art Board, Art Talks is a three-part series of lectures that relate to current exhibitions at RAM by notable artists and art educators. The 2010 Art Talks offered a fresh take on the Rockford Midwestern Biennial (on display through April 25) and Alchemy and Image (May 7-Aug. 29).

Fred Stonehouse is a Wisconsin painter and art professor at the University of Wisconsin—Madison who has made significant inroads into the art scenes of Chicago, Milwaukee and Minneapolis. His work is included in numerous museums, galleries, and private collections around the world, and represented by Howard Scott Gallery, New York; Koplin Del Rio Gallery, Culver City, Calif.; Tory Folliard Gallery, Milwaukee; Philip Slein Gallery, St. Louis; and Taylor Bercier Fine Art, New Orleans.

He is featured in the upcoming RAM exhibition Alchemy and Image, which presents the work of three key figures in Midwest art: T.L. Solien, Fred Stonehouse and John Wilde. RAM Curator Patty Rhea recently wrote: “Natural storytellers, these artists present a peculiar world where oddness and absurdity are commonplace. Influences as varied as folk art, surrealism and the Renaissance are evident in these psychologically-charged narratives. Always the consummate craftsmen, Solien, Stonehouse and Wilde are as diverse in style as they are unconventional in subject matter.

“Fred Stonehouse’s paintings are marked by a provocative edginess. Rendered in haunting clarity, the bizarre rules in his quirky world. Atmospheric effects, real and imagined, are captured with exquisite detail. The strange and fantastic creatures of Stonehouse’s kingdom are not only at home in nature—they are celebrated! This is a world of extremes. Good and evil, heaven and hell, animal and human forms come together to challenge and amuse.”